Corbridge Roman Town

Part of the Excavated Area,
with the Museum in the Background

The site of Corbridge Roman Town stands about half a mile north west
of the centre of modern Corbridge and is
reached from a minor road which winds its way along the north bank of the River
Tyne to Hexham. It has often in the past
been called "Corbridge Roman Site", and still is in the edition of the
guidebook on sale when we visited, but the change of description to "town" has
the dual benefit of being more accurate, and of giving prospective visitors a
sense of the sheer scale of what they are coming to see.

Which is worth knowing, because what you find here is a very
extensive area of excavation which allows visitors to wander through part of
the settlement that once stood here and which, in all probability, later simply
morphed into the Corbridge whose
church tower you can see a short distance
to the south east. An added reason to visit can be found in the superb museum
which stands at the west end of the excavations, and which offers the
opportunity to view an outstanding collection of Roman objects.

Roman Corbridge, possibly known as Coriosopitum to its residents,
stands only 2.3 miles behind the line of Hadrian's Wall, but has origins that
predate its better known neighbour. Traces of a circular hut reveal that people
were living on at least part of the site for some time before the Romans
arrived in these islands. When the Romans did arrive it took them a little time
to work their way up the country, and they arrived in the area of what is now
Corbridge in AD79, as
Julius Agricola
made his way north to invade Caledonia. Their first fort in the area was half a
mile west of the site you can see today, and has been called the Red House Fort
after the name of the farm on whose land it stood.

Corbridge stands close to the
modern A68. This roughly follows the line of the old Roman road, Dere Street,
into Scotland and this in turn formed an important junction with the Stanegate
running east to west between the Tyne and the Solway. In the late AD80s a new
fort was built on the site of the later town, presumably to provide security
for this strategically important junction and the nearby crossing of the River
Tyne. It is thought that the fort here was garrisoned by a unit of 500
auxiliary cavalrymen. It was built of wood, and this doubtless contributed to
its destruction by fire in AD105.

A second fort was built on the same site and to a similar plan to
its predecessor. This formed part of the defensive curtain of forts strung out
along the Stanegate. When Hadrian's Wall was built in the years from AD122 the
initial plan was to garrison its troops in forts placed a short distance to its
south. With this in mind the fort at Corbridge was rebuilt again, this time in
order to allow it to accommodate a cohort of 1,000 infantry. Within two years
the decision had been taken to garrison troops in forts built along the line of
the wall itself, and it seems likely that at this point the fort at Corbridge
fell out of use.

Things changed yet again when the Romans moved their northern
frontier forwards to the Antonine Wall in Scotland in AD142. As Corbridge stood
on the main road north it became an important focus of military activity once
more, and once again the fort was rebuilt, though this time stone was
extensively used for the first time. When the Antonine Wall was abandoned in
AD162 and Hadrian's Wall once more became the northern border of the empire,
the need for a fort at Corbridge disappeared altogether.

It is probable that the succession of forts that stood here had
spawned an accompanying civilian settlement, and with the final demise of the
fort at Corbridge the civilian settlement essentially took over. A major
setback occurred in about AD180, when a serious incursion by tribes from north
of the wall led to the loss of a Roman general and many of his troops.
Extensive signs of burning in Roman Corbridge suggest that the town suffered
badly before the might of Rome was able to reassert itself.

Many of the stone buildings that can be seen at Corbridge postdate
this episode, and it seems clear that the town went on to become a major
regional centre for the Romans in northern Britain. It is easy to imagine it
taking full advantage of the many nearby troops stationed along Hadrian's Wall
looking for opportunities to spend money on all too brief spells of rest and
relaxation. This would explain the temples and shops that have been unearthed,
and this might not have been the most peaceful of places on a Friday night.

Although the area that has been excavated at Corbridge is large, it
is worth remembering that what is on view today represents only a small
proportion of what is known of Roman Corbridge. It is thought that the total
area covered by the town at its fullest extent was some 27 acres or 11
hectares. The main road running through the centre of the excavated area, the
Stanegate, is known to have extended for some distance under what are now
fields to the east and to the west of the site.

What became of Roman Corbridge after the removal of central Roman
authority in AD410 can only be a matter of speculation. However, you have to
ask where the residents would go and what they would do if they were to move
elsewhere. The Romans had been in Corbridge in one guise or another for over
three centuries - say a dozen or more generations - and given the wider
problems in the Roman empire even those residents who were Roman citizens must
have felt torn between seeking the possibility of greater stability elsewhere
or staying in the only place they and their families had ever known.

The cessation of the pay to the troops stationed along the wall, and
the possible removal of those troops, would certainly have had a huge negative
impact on the local economy, not to mention its security, but it does seem
reasonable to assume that, as suggested at the beginning of this feature, Roman
Corbridge simply morphed into Saxon Corbridge, which morphed into medieval
Corbridge, which eventually became modern Corbridge.

As you wander around the excavated parts of Roman Corbridge, it does
help considerably to have the guidebook map available to you (or to take the
audio tour). The site can be divided into three main areas. South of the
Stanegate you find a tremendous confusion of urban development. This has been
interpreted as signs of two military compounds within the town, plus a series
of temples lining the main road itself. Near the museum end of the street on
its south side is what has become known as the "pottery shop" because of the
large quantity of broken pottery found here during excavation. This is a
fascinating area with a huge amount of fine detail to be enjoyed: and the
drains are particularly impressive...

The area to the north of Stanegate at first looks more sparse. Much
of it is covered by what is unfortunately called "Site 11". This was the name
given to it by the archaeologists who first excavated it. It comprises four
ranges of buildings surrounding a largely open space that contained what may be
a high status house and a military headquarters. The problem with the name
"Site 11" is that it sucks any excitement or romance out of this area of the
excavation. It would be far better to simply call it "the market" or "the
forum" and at least attach some interest to it, even if the description later
turns out to be wrong.

The uses of the buildings nearer to the museum on the north side of
Stanegate are much more obvious. Here you find a parallel pair of granaries,
complete with raised floors and air vents to keep the grain in the best
possible condition, and columns that supported porticos to keep the rain off
when loading and unloading from carts. Nearby is the most unexpected and most
enchanting of the buildings at Roman Corbridge. The fountain house was the main
distribution point for water in the town. An aqueduct brought water in from the
higher ground to the north. At the fountain house it was pushed through an
ornamental spout intended to aerate the water to help keep it fresh. This
filled up an aeration tank, which in turn filled up a trough from which
citizens could collect their water.

The museum at Corbridge Roman Town is quite superb and amply repays
a visit in is own right. It is usually possible to have a debate about the real
star attraction of such a place, but not here. Without doubt the highlight is
The Corbridge Lion. This is a large sandstone sculpture of a lion on the back
of an animal it is clearly about to eat. Whether the unfortunate creature about
to die is a deer or a sheep seems debateable, but the impressive carving of the
lion is beyond question. It probably started life as a grave ornament before
later serving as fountain head.